By Gary Schoeniger & Chris Thompson, president of Civic Collaboration Consultants, LLC We all know that entrepreneurship is vital to creating prosperous communities and the need to encourage and support entrepreneurial activity at all levels of society has never been more important than it is today. After all, entrepreneurs have…

Photo By Paul Skorupskas on Unsplash Learn How to Think (and Act) Like an Entrepreneur Part 2/8 I’ve spent the past two decades exploring the mindset and the methods of everyday entrepreneurs – the underdogs and the misfits whose only advantage in life is in the way they think. In this second post of an…

Why do so many people not understand the power of entrepreneurship? Perhaps the word “entrepreneurial” gives them hives or they have no idea how the word even applies to them. After all, they are not interested in starting a business so why should they care? Ice House Facilitator and founder of the Innovation Agency,…

(updated on 4/9/2019) Declining Government Employee Engagement Employee engagement is a significant challenge for government agencies. In fact, employee engagement is lower in public sectors than in private sectors. And, while 71% of state and local government employees are not engaged in their work, 17% of those employees are actively disengaged, working against the…

Entrepreneurial activity is widely recognized as the primary engine of economic growth. By inventing new products and services or improving those that already exist, entrepreneurs create new jobs that generate wealth, revitalize communities, and improve the overall quality of lives. And, fab labs have emerged as a mechanism to stimulate entrepreneurial behavior by providing the…

The world is changing rapidly. From artificial intelligence, robotics, and self-driving cars to the new “gig” economy, the evidence of dramatic change is abundantly clear. Suddenly, the rules for survival have changed and the mindset that once enabled us to succeed is rapidly becoming obsolete. We are at the dawn of a new workforce revolution;…

In the fall of 2017, over 400 Algonquin students engaged in the Ice House Student Success Program, a course focused on empowering students with an entrepreneurial mindset at the onset of their academic journey. Sherryl Fraser, chair of General Arts and Sciences, led the implementation. “After training faculty to become Ice House Certified Facilitators, we…

(Updated 4/9/2019 to reflect the current number of city employees that have been through the program) If you’re like most people, the word entrepreneurial is probably not the first thing that comes to mind when you think of government employees. For many, the word ‘bureaucrat’ is often used as a derisive term to describe government workers…

The World Economic Forum states the need to move entrepreneurship from the perimeter to the core of education. Yet, all too often, we see entrepreneurship on the perimeter housed in business departments as a certificate or degree that requires the self-selection of students. At the same time, the term entrepreneurship is widely misunderstood and…

Students hire colleges and universities in order to make progress in their lives, but is higher education fulfilling the job to be done? In his book Competing Against Luck, Clayton Christensen presents “jobs theory” and the need to identify the job customers are hiring you to do in order for them to make progress in their lives. The…